Dr. Flea Blogged His Malpractice Trial, Settles When Outed

Dr. Flea and His Blog

Dr. Flea was the alias of a pediatrician who blogged anonymously on Blogger.com. I have visited the site occasionally following links from Grand Rounds but his writing was a bit too bitter for me to become a regular reader. Recently, Dr. Flea started to blog extensively about his malpractice trial and then suddenly, all his blog entries were deleted although the placeholder URL still remains in place.

It turns out the plaintiff's attorney used Dr. Flea's blog against him in court. When outed, the pediatric pulmonologist decided to settle the case within 24 hours. New York Personal Injury Law Blog points out that the Flea story was printed on the front page of the Boston Globe, above the fold. "Which is to say, his patients and colleagues will all see it." This is regrettable. I am sure many of us feel sorry for Dr Flea as well as for the patient and his/her family, of course.

Blogging and Your Career

Blogging can be a dangerous business. If it is done right and in a positive way, it can help advance your career. If blogging involves poor judgment, it can have undesirable consequences. Just ask Mark Jen, reportedly the first employee to be fired for blogging. He worked for Google and was blogging about the company's upcoming products. It did not take long for Google, famous for its somewhat secretive corporate culture, to decide that Mark Jen was not the best fit. Since then, Google teams and employees have launched multiple blogs (both work-related and personal) and I have not heard of anybody running into problems because of what they have written online.

I would encourage anybody to write a blog if they have something interesting to say and add value to the online conversation. Just be smart about it. Write to share and educate not to blow off steam. We live in a Google world. What you post online today can come back tomorrow to haunt you. According to LifeHacker:

"A new study shows that one fourth of human resources people have decided against hiring a job candidate based on information they found online about that person. Luckily, you can have a say in what Google says about you."

Some Advice for Medical Bloggers

- Write as if your boss and your patients are reading your blog every day
- Comply with HIPAA
- Do not blog anonymously. List your name and contact information
- If your blog is work-related, it is probably better to let your employer know
- Use a disclaimer, e.g. " All opinions expressed here are those of their authors and not of their employer. Information provided here is for medical education only. It is not intended as and does not substitute for medical advice."

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SHM Annual Meeting and Cleveland Clinic Hospitalist Section

The Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM) was founded 10 years ago and the Section of Hospital Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic was established 7 years ago. We launched a new web site for the section last year.

During the last annual meeting of SHM in Dallas, Texas, members of our section presented 18 innovations, research, and clinical abstracts out of 133 accepted (14%). With the Cleveland Clinic logo present on so many posters, this was clearly the largest display of any single academic institution.

My small contribution consisted of 6 abstracts/posters which is 33% of the Clinic abstracts and 4.5% of the total accepted (not that anybody is counting). One of the abstracts was featured by Medscape: "Mini-Rounds" May Help Improve Physician-Patient Communication and Satisfaction (a free registration is required to see the web page). Laurie Barclay, M.D. of Medscape interviewed me and our Section Head, Frank Michota 2 weeks ago. All accepted abstracts were published in a supplement of the Journal of Hospital Medicine.

Former alumni of the Cleveland Clinic hospital medicine program continued to have a strong SHM presence as well:

- Shaun Frost, the regional director for Cogent Healthcare and director of the SHM perioperative pre-course
- Jim Pile, the director of the Division of Hospital Medicine at MetroHealth Medical Center and an annual meeting speaker
- Daniel Brotman, the director of Hospital Medicine at Johns Hopkins and a clinical vignette reviewer

References:
What I Learned from Making the Website of the Cleveland Clinic Hospitalists
Research Abstracts. Journal of Hospital Medicine, Volume 2, Issue S2 , Pages 1 - 39, published online: 4 Jun 2007.

Updated: 09/28/2007
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Emded Procedure Slideshows from Google Photos

Google Photos (currently named Picasa Web Albums) added Flash slideshows which can be embedded in web sites. This new feature is demonstrated with some of our procedure guides below. You can choose the photo size: from small (144 px) to extra-extra large (800 px).


Thoracentesis: A Step-by-Step Procedure Guide with Photos


Central Line Placement: A Step-by-Step Procedure Guide with Photos


Central Line Placement with Ultrasound Guidance: A Step-by-Step Procedure Guide with Photos

Update 06/26/2007:
Picasa Web has a mobile version and map locations.


Online Photo Sharing in Plain English

References:
Picasa Web Albums introduces embeddable Flash slideshows. DownloadSquad.com.
Put your photos on a map, and Picasa on your phone. Official Google Blog, 06/2007.

Updated: 02/02/2008
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Self-plagiarism of a Case Report in NEJM and Salami Publications

Self-plagiarism is the reuse of significant, identical, or nearly identical portions of one’s own work without acknowledging that one is doing so or without citing the original work (source: Wikipedia).

Last week, I updated the references of my post about complications of central line placement with another image from NEJM. Clicking through an old NEJM reference, I noticed something interesting -- the author has retracted his NEJM publication due to self-plagiarism. The same case was published twice in 2006 before being accepted to NEJM in 2007. The first publication was just an abstract in Circulation and one can probably argue that this does not impact the publication of the full case report. The second publication however features the complete report with the same striking images shown later in the NEJM.

This is an example of self-plagiarism -- a practice which should be strongly discouraged.

Another "academic trick" is publishing so-called "salami papers." For example, one large project is split ("sliced) in 2-4 smaller articles published in different journals and finally, the full manuscript is submitted at the end of the process. "Salami slicing" refers to the practice of creating several publications out of material that could have been published in a single journal or review (source: Wikipedia).

"Self-plagiarism: unintentional, harmless, or fraud?" was a recent commentary in the Lancet. Journals increasingly seeing submissions in which large parts of text have been copied from previously published papers by the same author. Lancet (http://bit.ly/4B0DO).

The Lancet Editor-in-Chief tweets his dark view of contemporary medicine, related to the salami publication conflict between NEJM and Lancet  - Forbes, 2012.

References:

Something you have never seen before -- a rare central line complication in NEJM
Complications of Central Line Placement - Pneumothorax, Arrhythmia, Hematoma
Retraction: Guo H. Complication of Central Venous Catheterization. N Engl J Med 2007;356:e2
Academic Plagiarism. Irving Hexham, Department of Religious Studies, University of Calgary.
Plagiarism, from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Dealing With Salami Publication. The World Association of Medical Editors.
Odd Ghostwriting Offer Raises Researcher’s Blood Pressure. WSJ’s Health Blog, 11/2007.
Fight against plagiarism continues http://bit.ly/cAzJcN one npublisher rejected 23% of submitted papers after using CrossCheck. Nature News, 2010.
Image source: Wikipedia, a Creative Commons license.
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Google Maps Street View


Google Maps launched a new very detailed views at street level of several cities on the U.S. with plans to expand to more locations in the future. Currently, Google can put in you in the driver seat for 5 cities: San Francisco, Las Vegas, Denver, New York and Miami.

You have to feel sorry for Microsoft. They paid a lot of money to fly planes to provide detailed aerial views of the major U.S. cities. Google outdid them simply by having people drive around and take pictures...


This is a video showing Street View in action.

Update 5/30/07: Google Street View and Personal Privacy

Robert Scoble writes that "a BoingBoing reader is worried that Google is infringing on his privacy by taking pictures of his cat in a window in his house.

No, sorry, it’s not spying and it’s not creepy. If you can see it from a public street it’s not private and you should not expect ANY privacy."

References:
Introducing... Street View! LatLong Blog.
The Earth is Closer: Street Views in Google Maps. Google Operating System.
Google Maps Street View invades privacy, exposes alien life. DownloadSquad.com.
BoingBoing reader demonstrates misunderstanding of privacy. Scobleizer.com.
The Google 'ick' factor. CNN, 6/2007.

Related:
Video: Getting around your neighborhood with Google Maps. Official Google Blog, 10/2008.

Updated: 10/14/2008
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